Mr. Putin Goes to Japan

Abe’s Chance to Make Peace With Russia

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JOSHUA W. WALKER leads the Japan work at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and is Vice President at APCO Worldwide, where he leads the APCO Institute.
HIDETOSHI AZUMA is an Adjunct Fellow at the APCO Institute.

In Japan, expectations have grown high that the two sides can finally resolve the lingering issue of the four Kuril Islands, which has impeded bilateral peace talks since the islands were captured from the Japanese by the Soviet Red Army during the final days of World War II. Yet that has been true of every such summit, including Putin’s last meeting with Abe during the 2016 APEC in Peru, and hopes have invariably been dashed. This time, however, the two leaders appear ready for a frank dialogue. Indeed, emerging geopolitical tides could help Abe seal a historic rapprochement with Russia.

The bilateral stalemate persists because the Cold War still haunts Asia. Unlike Europe, Asia’s Cold War–era geopolitical map was never redrawn. North and South Korea are still divided, even as East and West Germany have come back together. The lingering territorial dispute over the four Kuril Islands is another such legacy. Past territorial talks, meanwhile, have largely faltered because of the countries’ continued adherence to outdated principles, including the Soviet-Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which provided for the return two of the four disputed islands to Japan after the signing of a peace treaty.

Toru Hanai / Reuters

A woman walks past a banner showing Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Senzaki station in Nagato, Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan, December 14, 2016, a day before their summit meeting. The words on top reads, "A new start from here in Nagato."

In recent years, Russia and Japan have both expressed the need for a new approach to their dispute. For one, their interests have largely converged over the issue of